


you're always busy being make-believe

by The_Blonde



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-10-25 06:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20719967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Blonde/pseuds/The_Blonde
Summary: "If thereisa start then it was probably just a quick fleeting thought ofoh, he’s cutewhich had just been a statement of fact when confronted with Dan’s curls, freckles and dimples at the coffee machine. Dan has one of those perfectly put together faces that catch at some deeply hidden part of Phil (who does not have one of those faces). He had saidwho’s that?to PJ who repliedthat’s Dan, he did some amazing project with, like, cell manipulation or something, years ago. I don’t think he’s done anything here though. He’s cute, right?and Phil had saidI didn’t really notice, which implied that there had beensomenoticing, just not much. Just not to the level that would come later.Dan is surprised to see Phil, every time he collects him during the alarms, like he’s shocked to have been remembered. Sometimes he reaches out his arm to Phil and Phil wonders if he wants to be carried, lifted right out of the building.I can flyhe tells Dan, in his daydreams,where do you want to go?"Or: Phil is a (not so) average Friendly Neighbourhood Superhero who has a hard time keeping up this secret identity thing.





	you're always busy being make-believe

**Author's Note:**

> for the "writer's choice" prompt of my bingo card (for which this writer chose "superhero au")
> 
> Title from "Love is a Laserquest" by Arctic Monkeys.

For someone as clumsy as Phil, this whole regeneration thing is getting pretty old. He doesn’t really remember a time when it felt _new_, really, but hunched over on the roof of a pretty shady looking pub while he waits for his ribs to creak back together, it feels particularly like a gift he was given and now wants to return. But he feels that way about the whole thing sometimes. Most of the time.

When he finally clambers back in through their living room window, Cornelia points accusingly at the tear in his hoodie and says, “I’m not going to ask about that.”

Phil sighs. “You technically just did.”

“Do I need the first aid kit? I just refilled it.”

Phil doesn’t point out that she’s _always_ refilling it. “No, it’s -” he presses his hand to his stomach. “They’re back together.”

Cornelia follows the motion. “Rib?”

“I think all of them. I was chasing a mugger. There’s a lot of muggings at the moment, are you noticing that? I feel like they should be reducing or something because I’m here, but - I slipped. Off a roof. It was really gruesome actually, there was a -”

Cornelia frowns. “Stop. You know I don’t like -”

There are many things Cornelia doesn’t like. She says them a lot. She doesn’t like Phil patrolling, she doesn’t like hearing about what happens on said patrols (though it’s hard to avoid the aftermath sometimes), she doesn’t like keeping things from Martyn, or that Phil was actively trying to keep it from both of them until her bad habit of bursting into rooms without knocking had a pay off, she doesn’t like that he still works at the lab, that he doesn’t ask someone at the lab to at least test him, to at least try and work out what this is, Phil, _please_, it might -

“- You telling me about your injuries,” she finishes. “I don’t need the details.”

She looks, suddenly, very worried. The expression makes Phil reach out and pat awkwardly at the crimson mass of her hair. “I’m fine,” he says. “I can’t get injured. Or not in, like, a permanent way.”

“I know. I just wish you’d stop _trying it out_ it so much.”

“I don’t do it on purpose. I just have really bad balance.”

“A thing that everyone wants to hear from a crime-fighting vigilante, thanks Phil.”

“You think I fight crime?” Phil brightens. 

“I think.” Cornelia hesitates. “That you try. Really really hard.”

“Oh.” Phil feels the brightness dim, like he’s turning down the volume on himself. One of the not quite healed bones in his wrist sends a sharp pain up his arm. “I - You didn’t need to wait up. You don’t have to keep waiting up, I mean. It’s not like I’m Batman or anything, there’s not like - it’s not dangerous. It’s just trying to stop muggings and sometimes cars getting stolen. There’s no supervillains or anything.”

Several weeks from now Cornelia will remind him that he said that. For now she just tries to bring up the idea of a costume, not for the first time, rather than just wearing his standard green hoodie. _They’ll call you The Green Hoodie, Phil, do you want people to call you that or something like - _ at this point Cornelia usually stretches her arms out wide, but can never quite find the right name for whatever she wants Phil to be. _I can make you something. It would be easier if you knew what bit you though_.

(Phil can’t argue with that. Only he hadn’t seen it, hadn’t been looking, hadn’t taken his eyes away from Dan (Dan is another conversation, is another thing completely, Phil could make a list of the things he’s missed while he’s been looking at Dan instead), hadn’t noticed until he said _something bit me_ too quiet to hear under the alarms, hadn’t realised that he was actually reaching out for Dan, because there’d been a security breach of some kind, they all needed to be outside, and Dan was always late, hadn’t realised he was reaching out until his arm dropped. _I think something bit me_.

Dan blinked. “I hope not. Everything in here is pretty radioactive.” Then he laughed. Dan’s laugh is a squawk, an explosion of sound like a bubble bursting, so completely at odds with the closed off rest of him that it usually makes Phil laugh back and just makes the whole thing more awkward. 

He hadn’t laughed then though. “No, really. I felt -”

Dan suddenly looked up, apparently only now aware of the noise above them. “Wait, is there a fire drill?” 

“Sort of. It’s - they think someone’s trying to break in.”

Dan sighed. “_Again_? It gets really annoying when you’re trying to -” 

He didn’t finish the sentence with _work_ because Dan doesn’t work. Phil, from the reception desk, hears everyone else whisper about it. Dan hasn’t worked, or produced anything, for months. As far as Phil can tell he really just pushes things around his desk, moves items around his workspace, tuts if they’re not perfectly symmetrical. “I came to get you,” Phil said. “You were, I mean, you are, late. Everyone’s worried.”

Dan squawked again. “I doubt it.” Then he looked, properly, at Phil. “You came to get me?”

“We really need to leave.”

Dan finally stood up from his desk. “I really hope something didn’t bite you.” 

The hope hadn’t proved to be enough.)

-*-*-

Sometimes Phil wonders if he should just be called Trying His Best Man. That’s what people would probably say, if anyone he tried to help actually gave newspaper interviews afterwards. _He was really just trying his best. I mean, he didn’t get my bag back but that’s fine. I could tell he really wanted to_.

His abilities, powers, gifts, whatever you want to call them, seem to be five very seperate parts that he can’t quite get to fit together. The healing (which isn’t _fast_ and just reforms things he’s broken, like a piece of crumpled paper slowly unfolding). Phil isn’t sure how much he can push it, if he could actually die and come back. Cornelia isn’t keen on him testing it. Then the flying, which again he’s too scared to try fully. He mostly jumps very high and, sometimes, lands on his intended rooftop. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he lands with too much speed and trips right off the other side. 

And then the telekinesis (lots of broken plates), the strength (more broken plates, one broken coffee table and, once, the telephone receiver at work) and the speed (which, honestly, scares him a bit. He is not a person designed to go fast.)

On Tuesday night he tries to stop an attempted mugging (_another_ mugging, he has no idea what’s happening. On so many levels) by dropping from the roof above, possibly breaking or at least severely spraining his right ankle, startling the mugger enough that they drop the laptop they were trying to steal and run away before he can say or really do anything. The intended victim (muggee?) helps him to his feet and says, “My laptop’s broken.”

“Oh,” Phil says, muffled behind the two scarves Cornelia makes him wear, pulled right up to his nose. “Sorry.” He hops to his other foot, sparing his healing ankle. “I was just trying to -”

“Hey, it’s fine.” The muggee is about his mum’s age, the type of kind expression that is two steps away from offering him a cup of tea. “I appreciate you trying to help.”

If Phil had comic books written about him that’s what they’d say. The Green Hoodie: You Appreciate Him Trying To Help. 

“Are you trying to be a superhero?” she adds, still kind. 

“I -” Phil hesitates. “I’m - I want to help people.”

“That’s very brave.” She pats his arm. “Get home safe.”

Phil thinks he should be saying that to her, but the moment is gone. He jumps, high, up the length of the building he’d leapt from and, by some miracle, sticks the landing nine stories up, onto his good ankle. He thinks she shouts, “Very impressive!” after him.

-*-*-

PJ shouts, “Hey!”, from his side of The Desk (The Desk is a huge curved monstrosity that can only be referred to in capital letters. He and PJ sit at opposite ends, in front of their respective sides of the lab and have to yell at one another like they’re sailors in a storm, hands cupped around their mouths). “Hey!”

“Hi,” Phil replies. He hasn’t had coffee yet and can’t really muster much else. 

“Have you heard about this hoodie person?”

Phil opens his laptop far too violently. “What?”

“It’s on the news. Like, the local news, nothing major, but apparently he tried to help this woman from being mugged a few days ago. I don’t know if -” PJ clicks frantically at his computer. “Well, no, she says that she did most of the helping but that he was very nice and then he flew.”

Phil repeats, “Flew,” and then, “The local news?”

Cornelia, with perfect timing, texts him _WTF_ followed by _the green hoodie is a thing now phil, look what you’ve done_ and then _good job on the flying tho!!_ because she always has to end with some encouragement. 

PJ says, “I think jumped actually but, hey, it’s still cool right? I always wanted -” he stops, then frantically raises his eyebrows and nods, which is the universal signal for Dan’s arrival. PJ is not subtle. 

“Morning Dan!” Phil says, both words trembling and wavering in the air. His voice does strange things around Dan, like he forgets what syllables are and everything just wants to come out like _hello I have a ridiculous workplace crush on you and that coffee that always appears on your desk in the morning is from me. I’ll keep everything symmetrical for you always and I’ll_

“Oh.” Dan blinks. He looks surprised, sometimes, a lot of the time, all the time, that there are other people in the world, as if he thought he was just wandering around by himself. “Morning -”

“Phil.” Phil points to himself. PJ, from across The Desk, snorts. “It’s Phil.”

“I know,” Dan replies. He holds out his keycard, Phil obediently scans it, returns it and, when he does, Dan gives him an awkward little half smile (a hint of a full smile that Phil _knows_ must be blinding) and mumbles, “Have a good day.” 

They do this every morning, a dance routine to which Dan always forgets the steps. As he walks away, PJ sighs, deeply, echoing from the other side of the mountain range that is The Desk. “Look, at some point, you’re gonna have to -”

“No,” Phil says. “No. Nope. No way.”

“So this is just going to continue. Exactly like this. Every day this.” PJ leans forward, rests his chin in his hands and gazes longingly up through his eyelashes in Phil’s direction. “This all the time.”

“I don’t look like that.”

“You don’t have to look at yourself. I do.”

The impression is probably accurate, Phil can admit that. He knows what his face is capable of doing, what his face _does_, when he feels things strongly; little air bubbles bursting on the surface (he feels a lot of things strongly, far too much to keep hold of). When he takes Dan his coffee about an hour later, the echoing of PJ’s sighs in the background, he doesn’t need to guess what expression he’s making. The pining that must be radiating from every pore of him.

Dan, for a change, is at his desk, arranging his identical black pens into identical lines. He says, “Oh!” when Phil puts the mug on his desk, and then, “You!” both with more feeling than either Phil or the coffee deserve. Sometimes Dan’s voice (like his laugh) is suddenly loud, like he can’t control the volume of it, and then immediately quiet, like he’s trying to gather the feeling back in. He half-whispers, “You didn’t need to bring me coffee.”

Phil pushes one pen in line with the others. “I was making one for myself,” which is a lie. “And I thought of you,” which implies that there are moments at work when he’s not thinking of Dan. 

“Thanks.” Dan stares into the mug. “You made it exactly how I like it.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve made you coffee, Dan.” 

“It’s not?” Dan pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m - sorry, I get distracted in work, sometimes, and I maybe didn’t notice - Phil.”

“Yes.”

“I remembered. I mean, I _remember_. I’m not totally useless.”

“No one thinks you are.”

Dan snorts. “Tell that to all the emails asking me when I’m actually going to get something done.”

Phil wants to say something like _good things are worth waiting for_, but it sounds clumsy even thinking it, then a whole mixture of things he wants to say to Dan get tangled together and come out as, “You will. Get something done,” without the _I know you will. I’m probably 85% of the way in love with you_ that stays tripped over on his tongue. 

Dan looks so surprised that Phil wonders if the words had tumbled out anyway. “That shows that you don’t know much about me really.”

Phil wants to smudge away the purple under his eyes, to catch the ink stained lapels of his lab coat, to find the dimples in his cheeks, and say I want to know so much about you that I could write the Dan encyclopedia. Twenty volumes of it. Thirty. I want to, he says, in his head. I _want_ to.

-*-*-

A few weeks after his first patrol (a predictably awkward affair that had ended with him standing on a roundabout holding a scooter above his head yelling _does this belong to anybody?_ in increasingly desperate tones) he received an email from someone then calling themselves The Ghost (before they were The Phantom), containing one sentence: _work on your hand to hand combat_.

Phil had squinted and replied _my what?_

_EXACTLY_

The Ghost is now The Spirit and has progressed slightly past giving constructive criticism and into gentle encouragement. They work in London and Phil’s seen clips of them on Youtube in some kind of black on black ensemble, delivering roundhouse kicks in montages set to grime music. They speak through a decoder, a gravel tone that suits them as they have a tendency to drop into noir drenched descriptions that could be on movie posters. Once Phil had asked where in London they’re from and they had said, “I exist only in the shadows, on the outskirts of society, hiding from the light, watching from above and sometimes below, I am -” before Phil had said, “Right, right, me too, that’s fine.”

Today they’re in a surprisingly chatty mood and skip the usual build-up to say, “There was another break in. At your lab.”

Phil says, “It’s not my lab. I just -”

“Isn’t this averaging once a week?”

“They never actually seem to get _in_, there’s always -”

“Once a week?”

“Most of the time.”

There’s a burst of static that probably means that The Spirit is sighing at him. “What do they make in this lab? You were going to look into that, right?”

“I’m just on the front desk,” Phil replies, not for the first time. The Spirit normally says _gosh, you’re really not taking this secret identity thing seriously_ afterwards. “Everything beyond that is a complete lockdown, and they don’t really let me wander around. Unless the alarm goes and I have to go and check everyone’s left.”

There’s more static, longer and more drawn out.

Phil, defensively, says, “What?”

“You do a lap of the building? Looking for people?”

“No, there’s really - I only go to one room, in particular, there’s one - I have to make sure that - look, the fire drills don’t matter, it’s really -”

“They don’t,” The Spirit states, even flatter than usual. “You’re at least still taking the classes, right?”

“The self defence classes?” Phil says. “Of course. Sure.”

He isn’t. The classes had been a terrible idea. He’s too fast and too strong, even with limited ability. He doesn’t entirely trust what he’s capable of doing. The broken plates and coffee table had been book ended by a solid brick that turned to dust in his hands and the front of Cornelia’s Mini held a few inches over his head. Cornelia herself had said _gosh_ in a tone that was slightly frightened and so he had never tried it again. _Gosh, Phil. Think of what you could do_.

“I know that’s a lie,” says The Spirit. “You have to stop being so afraid of yourself.”

“I’m not afraid of myself.”

The Spirit says _think of what you could do_ in a very different way to Cornelia. Even with their faked voice Phil can sense the reverence in it. The annoyance of wasted potential. _Think of what you could be_.

“Then try,” they say. “You literally can’t get hurt.”

“Not physically.” Phil hesitates. “I could hurt someone else. Or someone else could be hurt because of me trying.”

There’s another burst of static, up and down in tone.

“I’m not very brave,” Phil adds, because he feels like he should. Not that The Spirit, who is probably hunched over like a gargoyle on a London rooftop as they speak, will understand. Not that anyone does really. 

The pause that follows is so long that he assumes The Spirit has leapt off said roof to go and fight actual crime (Phil imagines drug deals, the mafia, a car chase), before they say, “You probably should start trying to be.”

-*-*-

On Thursday someone tries to break into the lab again. The same someone or another someone, or a collection of someones, who knows. Phil knows every pitch of the alarm sounds at this point, all of the modulations in its tone. PJ has already left, because he’s always the responsible one who takes charge of helping people to the assigned meeting point, Phil goes to get Dan.

All of Dan’s stationary is stacked into towers of equal height, equal distance apart. When he sees Phil look at them he flushes in patches across his cheekbones. 

Phil hadn’t meant to look at all, he’s just always conscious of staring at Dan too much, always tries to find something else in the room to focus his gaze on. He says, “Dan. The alarms.”

“I know,” Dan replies. “I was just leaving.”

“Everyone’s already outside.”

“And I really don’t think any of them will notice if I’m not there.” Dan unfolds himself up from his chair. “This happens a lot. Not the not noticing me, the -” he points to the ceiling. “That. Doesn’t it?”

“I guess. More than usual.”

“You’re not worried about that?”

“Are you?” Phil says. He thinks that if the alarms were causing Dan any kind of distress he’d pull them all down from the ceilings and crush them between his palms.

“I worry about everything. My opinion probably isn’t valid.” 

“It’s just -” Phil starts to step back towards the door. Dan obediently follows. “No one’s going to get in here. It’s like a fort. There’s probably lasers and stuff. The alarms are just to say that someone’s trying. And, uh, failing. Hopefully.”

Dan looks startled. “Hopefully?”

“I just meant -”

“You’re normally more reassuring than this.”

Phil stops mid-step at the suddenness of that. “Am I?”

“Yeah, you normally tell me that it’s probably a fault, or maybe someone set it off accidentally, or a pigeon triggered it. You’re probably just trying to make me feel better though.”

Phil says, “I” and “Probably” and, finally, without meaning to, “Does it work?”

Dan echoes, “I,” and then seems to think better of what he was going to say next, abruptly changes the subject. “Have you read about this green hoodie person?”

Phil stops walking again. Dan nearly trips right into his back. “What?”

“On the internet”, Dan replies, patiently. “Everyone’s talking and I don’t _participate_ in the talking, I don’t really talk much, but they all -”

“You’re talking to me right now.”

Dan shrugs. “I commented. I said they should get a better outfit.”

“A better outfit?”

“The hoodie. You can’t fight crime in _green_.” Dan looks horrified at the thought. Phil is suddenly aware that they haven’t actually resumed walking, he has one foot in the hallway and the other still in Dan’s office. “And I think it’s like a lime green too, it just looks like a standard Topman hoodie, like they didn’t even make a real effort, or -”

“Then what would you suggest?” Phil tries, very hard, to keep his voice casual, pretends that not much is really riding on the answer, like he isn’t going to throw the green hoodie away as soon as he gets home. “For, uh, fighting crime.”

“Oh,” Dan says. “Black. Obviously. Everyone looks awesome in black.”

Phil replies, “Right,” and finally manages to propel himself forward. He loses Dan as soon as they make it to the pavement but he isn’t really paying that much attention because he’s texting Cornelia.

_Urgent outfit change needed. I was thinking black?_

Cornelia instantly responds: _THANK YOU_ and _thoughts on capes?_

-*-*-

Phil doesn’t know when the whole thing with Dan started. He never falls into anything quickly, he isn’t impulsive, has to let things bloom slowly in his heart. It takes a lot for him to love something. The Dan Thing, as PJ calls it, does not have an obvious beginning, middle or end. It stays on one steady line where he does the same thing day in day out and, somehow, expects the outcome will (in one magic instant) be different. That he will ask Dan for his keycard and Dan will say _I’m in love with you_ instead. Or at least _do you want to get coffee_, though that seems too basic, but Phil isn’t skilled enough romantically to think of anything else.

If there is a start then it was probably just a quick fleeting thought of _oh, he’s cute_ which had just been a statement of fact when confronted with Dan’s curls, freckles and dimples at the coffee machine. Dan has one of those perfectly put together faces that catch at some deeply hidden part of Phil (who does not have one of those faces). He had said _who’s that?_ to PJ who replied _that’s Dan, he did some amazing project with, like, cell manipulation or something, years ago. I don’t think he’s done anything here though. He’s cute, right?_ and Phil had said _I didn’t really notice_, which implied that there had been some noticing, just not much. Just not to the level that would come later. 

Phil was aware of Dan in stages; how and when he liked his coffee, the absent minded way that he carried himself, how he couldn’t make small talk of any kind, how he always walked or stood right at the very back of the group if the scientists ever had a meeting, glancing around as if he had to know where all the available exits were, his lack of volume control, the curls at his forehead, the tiny glimpses of his half smiles and sudden laughs, the dream filled sadness of his eyes. 

All of these stages had slotted together on one random day when Dan had passed Phil his keycard and smiled (more than half, almost three quarters) and Phil had felt it (it, so physically that he was amazed no one else noticed, like he’d already been feeling it for months) and then had instantly been annoyed with himself for wanting such an impossible hopeless thing. 

Dan is surprised to see Phil, every time he collects him during the alarms, like he’s shocked to have been remembered. Sometimes he reaches out his arm to Phil and Phil wonders if he wants to be carried, lifted right out of the building. _I can fly_ he tells Dan, in his daydreams, _where do you want to go?_

-*-*-

The new outfit is some kind of black bodysuit that Cornelia had lying around from her long ago musical career. It’s far too tall for Cornelia to ever have worn and when he asks she says, “No, it’s Martyn’s, from when he used to do the pyrotechnics. There’s probably still a lot of burn marks on it” (there are). The material is thick (Cornelia insists it isn’t velvet but it feels suspiciously like it is) and there’s a hood which allows him to cover his hair and eyes. Cornelia fashions together a half-mask for him to wear on the lower part of his face and tries to talk him into a cape (Martyn had worn one with the outfit, apparently, but then Martyn could probably make it look cool).

Cornelia puts her hands on her hips and says, “Much better,” though even Phil can admit the bar was low on that. “Why the sudden change?”

“I had feedback.”

“_Feedback_? From _who_?”

“No one in particular.” He shifts from one foot to the other, bounces in the combat boots that Cornelia had insisted he wear. “I’ve told you about the break ins at the lab, right?”

Cornelia narrows her eyes. “Yes.”

“Do you think that, uh, maybe I should be doing something about that?”

“I don’t want you to put yourself in danger,” Cornelia replies, automatically, but that’s her answer to most things Phil asks. “Why, do you _want_ to be doing something about that?”

“Someone said -”

“The same someone who gave you feedback?”

“No, a different someone.”

“You’re not replacing me are you?”

“Replacing you from what?” 

“You know, the -” Cornelia stretches her arms out, “Calm and overprotective friend who worries about you but gives amazing advice and helps you save the day. I’m your Alfred.”

“Great. Where’s my cool underground lair and my batmobile?”

Cornelia clicks her tongue against her teeth. “What’s even in the lab, Phil? Really?”

“No one knows.”

“No one? You don’t talk to any of the scientists?”

Phil says, “Uh,” and feels the creeping sensation of a blush rising up his cheekbones. “Not really.”

“You just got bitten by something there and gained superpowers and then never asked anyone about it.”

“That’s not an easy conversation to start.”

Cornelia allows him that one. “There must be a nice scientist there. You don’t have to ask them as you, you can ask as -” she sweeps a hand over Phil, the expanse of black velvet that he currently is. “We really need a name for you. A proper name.”

“You want me to speak to someone like this?”

“Disguise your voice,” Cornelia replies, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “No one’s going to assume it’s you anyway.”

-*-*-

His disguised voice (which had made Cornelia laugh hysterically) is deep and sounds like it’s being dragged up from his feet. It also hurts his throat _a lot_ but he’s not exactly displeased with the slight husk that it gives when he says, “Can I talk to you?”

Dan, because of course it’s Dan, as if he’d pick anyone who _wasn’t_ Dan, shrieks. It sounds a lot like his laugh, the pitch of it, so much so that Phil thinks he is laughing until he notices that Dan has pinned himself to the wall, palms flat at his side.

“No,” Phil says, “I didn’t mean to scare you, I just wanted to ask you something.”

Dan, voice wavering up and down, says,”_Ask_ me something?”

They’re in the car park of the lab, either late at night or early in the morning, depending on the type of person you are, Dan always stays in work until a ridiculous hour and so Phil had managed to land in front of him as he was about to cross out of the lab and into the street. The landing had been heavier and slightly more aggressive than he wanted, hence the shrieking. 

“About the lab? It’s not - please don’t be scared. I’m not - I’m trying to help people, I’m the green hoodie, I was on the -”

“You’re in black though,” Dan points out. The wavering has stopped but there’s a solid voice crack on _though_.

“Yeah.” Phil, in spite of himself and every feeling he usually represses, adds, “Do you like it?”

“Do I like it,” Dan echoes. 

Phil is more thankful than ever that his face is hidden. “No, it’s fine, that was a stupid thing to ask, it’s new, I’m still not sure about it, and I _think_ it’s velvet, but I -”

“I like it,” Dan says, offering a very slight smile (a quarter rather than three quarters but Phil will take it). “I never liked the green.”

“I know.”

“What?”

“What? Nothing. I wanted -”

“To ask me about the lab.” Dan appears to have moved past fear and, judging by his expression, is now somewhere between intrigued and confused. He’s still leaning against the wall but not as violently as before. Phil thinks it wouldn’t take much to pull him forward, probably just a touch a fingers to wrist, maybe even a - “What about it?”

“I’ve -” Phil thinks wildly of what The Spirit would do (silhouetted against a moonlight sky, holding a bus full of rescued children above their head). “I’ve noticed a lot of break ins. Attempted break ins, but I don’t know enough about what this lab does to try and work out why someone would be trying to get in so much.”

“I’m completely the wrong person to ask about that.”

“But you’re a scientist, right?”

Dan laughs but it’s not his usual one, it’s really just the word _ha_ scuffed out on a breath. “I had, like, three or four very productive years as a scientist, if that counts. I had a reputation and everything. I did, uh, cell manipulation? I haven’t done anything for a really long time.”

“I don’t really know what cell manipulation is.”

“It’s - I never really, none of the things worked but I did a lot of research and I had good ideas, and they _could_ have worked, if the person with the ideas was slightly more productive than me, because I’m not - I have good ideas, I’m not great at seeing them through, which doesn’t answer your question, I - it’s making things different. Cell manipulation. I wanted to make ordinary things extraordinary.”

Phil says, “What?” in his normal voice, and then, “Sorry, what?” in his bass tones. “Do you mean to like, give people _powers_ and stuff?”

“That ended up being way beyond my capabilities.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

Dan tilts his head to one side. “What do you mean?”

Phil panics, backs away from the question. “How far did you get into your research? Do you keep it here, at the lab?”

“I’m not exactly taking it home with me. Not anymore. And also I didn’t get far. I tend to collapse under the weight of my own expectations. Oh, that’s - you don’t need to do that.”

Phil blinks and realises he’s patting Dan’s shoulder. It’s possibly the closest he’s ever been to Dan, close enough to see the freckles mixing into the circles under his eyes. He looks tired in a way that Phil has never seen someone look tired before, a way that’s beyond physical and seems to have infiltrated all of him, right into the drooped curls on his forehead. If Phil had a cape he’d wrap him in it and take him home (he wants, very badly, to take Dan home).

“I can fly,” he says instead. 

“I know. I read about you.”

“Do you want a lift home?”

Dan raises his eyebrows. “What, like, on your back or something?”

Phil has never flown with anyone (unless carrying Cornelia bridal style two inches above the kitchen floor counts) but it’s suddenly the best idea in the world. “Sure.”

Dan eyes Phil’s arms, in a not unappreciative way. “Nah. I’m too tall for that. You’d get an elbow in the face and drop me.”

“I’d catch you.” Dan laughs at that and it’s finally his real one. Phil fists his hand into the fabric of his jacket and says, “You shouldn’t work so late,” because he’s wanted to say that to Dan a lot.

“I told you,” Dan replies. “I’m not working. Being here late just helps me pretend that I am.” He looks at Phil, then at Phil’s hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t give you the answer you wanted, did I? I mean, I just talked about myself the whole time instead.”

“No, I liked hearing it.”

Dan says, “Who _are_ you?”

Phil is aware that he’s let this whole conversation go on for far too long. The Spirit, when trying to give advice on what they call _interrogations_, always says that speed is key, though they hadn’t exactly expressed what to do if you’re past halfway in love with the person you’re speaking to. _The longer you talk the more you give away, keep to short sentences, let them speak, don’t express an opinion on anything they’re saying and if they say something like who are you or do we know each other then throw yourself into the sky because you’ve blown it. Phil, are you listening, I feel like you’re not listening_.

“You’re talking like you know me,” Dan continues. “But, people who know me aren’t usually - they’re not that patient with me, or that -”

Phil, forgetting to do his fake voice, says, “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry,” and (taking advice for once) throws himself up into the sky.

-*-*-

That is, up onto the roof of the lab and then to a series of other roofs as he makes sure Dan gets home safely. The Spirit hadn’t said what the correct thing to do afterwards was. Phil hadn’t looked down immediately when he landed on the roof because he didn’t trust himself not to jump straight back to Dan’s feet but when he _had_ looked Dan was still in exactly the same place, staring up like he was looking for something hidden in the stars.

“This is bad,” The Spirit says. “Also, I’m not a relationship advice service, this is outside of my remit.” There’s occasional shattering glass and shouting from behind them.

“I can call back if you’re on a job.” Phil hovers his mouse over the Skype connection. “I just wanted to talk to someone, and you’re the -”

“This isn’t a job, it’s a calling. Is serving justice a job? Protecting those who need it, giving up all other aspects of my -” There’s a possible explosion in the background. “My life. This isn’t a job. I don’t. I said you weren’t ready to start speaking to people.”

“I would have been better if it was just a random person.”

“Then why didn’t you pick a random person?”

“I wanted to talk to him.”

The Spirit says, “You like him,” and Phil is too surprised by the basic nature of the statement to say anything back. “That’s fine, it’s okay if you do, I didn’t mean to be _harsh_. Tell me about the lab again.”

“They’re working on cell manipulation, like, giving people abilities and stuff, I think. That’s what Dan was working on, and I definitely - I got bitten by something in there, I told you that. Someone must be trying to get to it.”

“You’re going to have to stop them then.”

“Oh, _obviously_,” Phil says. “It’s the easiest thing in the world.”

The Spirit, never good with sarcasm, earnestly replies, “No, Phil, it’s not. It will be very difficult.”

-*-*-

The next alarms are a week later. Phil, going to fetch Dan, is amazed to find him already out of his office and halfway down the corridor. His face must do something confusing and obvious because Dan smiles and says, “I was paying attention, that’s all. And also I was starting to feel guilty that one day there’s actually going to be an emergency and you’re going to be stuck in my office with me while the ceiling collapses. Or something.”

“Or something,” Phil says. 

They’re outside for longer than usual. It’s too hot and everyone complains (about how often this is happening, the lack of shade, the tone of the alarms) so loudly that they all miss the person on the roof except Phil. He hadn’t even really been looking intentionally, he was just trying to gaze at something that wasn’t Dan, but then there was a person. Running from the left side of the roof to the right. They’re also, Phil notices, wearing a cape. A _cape_.

He says, “Oh no,” under his breath but Dan, standing next to him, hears it anyway and raises his eyebrows. “I’m going to, uh, find some shade. I’m really - just wait here. Stay here. Don’t follow me.” Dan starts to say something but Phil is already speed walking to the side of the building that’s hidden from the street. He repeats, “Don’t follow me,” just to make it clear but saying it so much is starting to sound like he actually wants Dan to follow him which is maybe why Dan’s eyebrows stay raised but he can’t think about that right now.

The speed walk becomes a run which leads to a jump which turns into flying which ends up with him landing almost on the caped figure and results in him shoulder barging them to the ground and saying, “Sorry!” 

The person repeats, “Sorry? You’re starting this with sorry?” They’re wearing a full mask, a fishbowl shaped thing that covers their entire head (Cornelia would approve) and there’s a silver briefcase under their left arm. 

Phil, belatedly, realises that he isn’t disguised at all, is up on this roof in his work clothes and his name badge, tie fluttering at his neck in the breeze. He has no idea what to say or what to do and can only recall telling Cornelia _there’s no supervillains or anything_ like the incredibly naive and _clueless_ person he is. He didn’t even want any supervillains, if that’s what this person is, there could be a reasonable explanation, he supposes, but there’s probably not, and he’d really been fine with the muggers. They were just about on his level. 

Fishbowl says, “Great chat,” and sits up. Phil thinks they’re looking at him but he can’t tell. “Look, I’m not gonna fight you, it wouldn’t be fair, I’ve been training for this for a really long time and I’d feel bad about hurting you, so I’m just gonna take this and go, okay?” They pat the briefcase. “You can get me next time.”

“What’s in the briefcase?”

“You know what’s in there. It’s wasted here. _He’s_ wasting it.”

Phil takes a step forward and Fishbowl throws their hand up with a crackle of something electric. “I can’t let you take it.”

“You’re not going to be able to stop me. We’re in completely different leagues here. I read about you, and your falling off buildings and whatever. It’s really sweet, that you’re trying, but -”

The telekinesis works in the quickest way it ever has (Phil has spent several awkward pauses with his hand outstretched while the thing he’s trying to move stubbornly does _not_). Fishbowl looks startled, down at the space under their arm where the briefcase had been and then over to it clutched to Phil’s chest. 

“Well,” they say. “This makes it more interesting, I guess. Not to start and end a conversation in the same way but, sorry.”

Phil says, “Wait, I have to -” but the “to” is really more of a shout as Fishbowl kicks him solidly, right in the briefcase, like they actually didn’t want to hurt him by kicking his actual chest, and sends him stumbling off the roof and nine stories down into a dumpster.

He doesn’t drop the briefcase, though he’s fairly sure that he’s broken some ribs (always the ribs), possibly both ankles and something in his back. He lies as still as possible, grateful to have landed in a pile of cardboard rather than on concrete (again, possible that Fishbowl deliberately tried to aim for somewhere that he wouldn’t be too horribly injured), and waits for everything to reform. It takes a while, he’s never broken anything in his back before.

-*-*-

Dan is still on the pavement when he returns to the front of the building, which is so unexpected that Phil, still limping slightly, thinks _I have never in my life wanted anything as much as you_, surprises himself with the honesty of it, and then immediately wants to cry.

Dan says, “Phil,” and, “Are you _limping_?”

“I tripped,” Phil replies. Dan frowns. “Why are you still out here?”

“You hadn’t come back and I -” Dan’s frown deepens. “It doesn’t matter. It was an actual robbery this time, apparently. They took some of my -” he stops. “Nothing important. Just, like, unfinished things. Were you carrying a briefcase before?”

Phil mentally adds _carrying the briefcase_ to the list of things he’s missed while he’s been looking at Dan instead. “No. I found it in the dumpster.” There is no possible story he can come up with for why he would have been looking in a dumpster, and so he doesn’t add anything. One rib folds itself into position and he gasps at the feel of it, presses his hand to his side.

“Where did you go?” Dan is frowning so hard now that he’s almost grimacing, causing dimples in his cheeks and a furrow at his eyebrows. “How did you trip?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters.”

“Dan,” Phil says. “It really doesn’t. It’s just me, I just tripped. You didn’t have to wait.”

“You literally ran away while yelling _don’t follow me_, of course I waited.”

“It doesn’t -”

“It matters to me,” Dan interrupts. “Is what I’m really trying to say. Sorry. I’m not great at saying what I really mean.”

Phil stares, feels like every part of him is folding and unfolding at once. “That’s okay. I’m not great at that either.”

When they walk back inside Dan touches his elbow, not particularly heavily, just two fingers at the crook of Phil’s arm, no real intent just a _I’m still here, that just happened_ (and the thought of _that just happened_ is not something Phil wants to dwell on right now: the cape, the briefcase, the fact that he’d jumped onto the roof in his own clothes, Cornelia is going to be so mad). He touches the same place, right after Dan pulls his hand back, right in Dan’s eyeline but he’s too tired to worry about being obvious, and Dan smiles. 

He delivers the briefcase to security, who do not appear to believe the dumpster story but have no way of clarifying anything because all of the security footage has been deleted. Phil hadn’t even thought about the cameras.

PJ says, “Where were you?” He looks exhausted, flinches a little when he sees Phil, it’s never fun trying to herd everyone back into the building. “It’s been ages.”

“I found a briefcase. Outside. They won’t say what’s in it, security took it, but I think it’s probably the stolen stuff. Whatever the stolen stuff is. No one tells us anything.”

“You’re just now realising that.”

“Peej.” Phil leans forward, as far as he can across the desk. “What is this place?”

“They don’t pay us enough to know that, Phil.”

“Seriously.”

“I don’t know.” PJ raises his hands, defensively, _don’t ask me I’m just a receptionist_. “I don’t think we’re supposed to know.”

“That doesn’t scare you?”

“_Scare_ me?” PJ keeps his hands raised. “Did something happen? You can tell me.”

Phil’s thought about telling PJ many times, has a number of daydreams about PJ being his sidekick, they could have coordinating outfits. PJ would absolutely wear a cape. He could do all the talking and, probably, a high percentage of the action and Phil would have company, out on the rooftops and also inside, in his heart, knowing that someone else _knew_ him. He loves Cornelia but she worries so much that the worry passes onto him. PJ would think it (and by extension, Phil himself) was the best thing ever. In the daydreams he tells Phil so, and Phil almost believes him. 

He can’t tell PJ. He shouldn’t have told Cornelia. He will never ever tell Martyn. If anything happened he wouldn’t just throw himself into the sky, he’d keep going until he reached the sun.

“Nothing happened,” he replies.

-*-*-

The not telling Martyn is getting increasingly difficult. When he gets home from work, Cornelia is Skyping with him. Phil can see Martyn’s smiling face, somewhere up a mountain in Peru. At least, he thinks it’s Peru. They have a map that Cornelia moves a pin around on, tracking Martyn’s current whereabouts. He tends to just send Phil photos of adorable animals he’s seen rather than the actual landscapes.

Cornelia takes one look at Phil and says, “What’s happened?”

Martyn, from the laptop, says, “What? Is he okay? Phil, get over here.”

Phil does not. “I’m fine. We had another break in, that’s all.”

Cornelia raises her eyebrows at him. Phil nods his head. Cornelia’s eyes widen.

“What are you doing?” Martyn says. “It’s not fair to have secret conversations when you’ve got someone on Skype. Phil, seriously, get over here.”

Phil does not. To look closely at Martyn would almost certainly make him cry, which would then make _Martyn_ cry. He’s done that since they were kids, since he would sleep on the floor next to Phil’s crib because he couldn’t stand being away from him. He cried every time Phil did, which must have driven their parents mad, and could never explain why. (_Well, I can, he’d said once, while drunk. _It’s because I love you and seeing you sad makes me sad too__).

Phil will never ever tell Martyn. 

“Phil,” Martyn repeats.

“He’s fine,” Cornelia says. “He just got back from work, he’s tired, that’s all.” The casual tone of her voice doesn’t match her face when she looks at Phil and she reaches out, angling herself so Martyn can’t see, to pat the only part of him she can reach (which turns out to be his knee). 

“What did you say about break ins?” Martyn is very close to the speaker, he must be angling his phone as close to his face as possible. “I heard something about break ins.”

“I’m going back out,” Phil tells Cornelia. He can’t look at Martyn, can’t stand to hear the brotherly protectiveness in his voice. He imagines telling Martyn everything, not knowing where he would start, how he would lead up to the fact that he had his first encounter with someone like him and he’s fairly sure that he blew it. He’s always failing the tests. 

“We’ll talk when you get back?” Cornelia asks.

Phil nods and leans over to rub his thumb across her laptop camera. He always does that to Martyn, pretends like he’s cleaning him. Martyn laughs, and says, “Thanks, I needed that,” like he always does. 

Cornelia pats his cheek. “Don’t be too late.” She leans back and mouths _be careful_ so that Martyn can’t see. _We’ll talk later_.

-*-*-

Dan doesn’t scream this time. In fact, he looks pleased. Phil, having changed into his costume in an alleyway and fairly sure parts of it are on backwards, stumbles at the expression. He says, “Hello,” while trying to regain his balance.

“Hi,” Dan replies. “I was hoping you’d come back.”

“Really?”

Dan, as he often does when he accidentally says something sincere, looks vaguely horrified. “I - Wow, uh, yes. That’s actually exactly what I wanted to say.”

“You don’t normally say what you want to say?”

“I try to avoid saying much at all.”

“That’s not true,” Phil says. “You talk to me.” He has no idea which _me_ he means. 

That becomes obvious when Dan says, “We’ve met once,” and frowns, just not deeply enough to cause his dimples. “And you left really abruptly.”

Phil doesn’t know how to answer that really. I had to leave. I let the conversation go on for too long because of how much I like you (do you have any idea how much I like you?) I had to jump into the sky to get away from you, and not in a bad way, but in the way that being around you becomes too much. I touched your shoulder, you remember that. Today you touched my elbow. I’m thirty-two years old and you touching my _elbow_ is the best thing that’s happened to me all month. All year. My entire life.

“There was another break in. Today,” he says instead. “They took something.” Dan nods. “Something of yours?”

“Some old things. From my super productive famous days. I didn’t - I wasn’t expecting anything to actually get _taken_, I didn’t think I really cared about it that much anymore because it’s such - it’s a part of my life I don’t really think about. It’s like it’s someone else’s work, not mine. But, I didn’t realise it had been taken until they found it again, and I don’t like the idea of someone else using it, you know? It’s mine.”

“No. I understand that.” Phil watches Dan pull the strap of his bag through his hands, top to bottom, and gives into the small piece of his ego that is yelling _mention me mention me mention me_. “Do you know who found it?”

Dan says, “No,” and Phil’s ego, never the strongest of things, shrinks back into the shade. Dan gives him a look that isn’t suspicious exactly, but something like the times Phil has seen him trying to work the coffee machine in the break room. Not being able to figure it out but really really wanting to. “Why? Was it you?”

Phil laughs, the most suspicious thing he could have done, and Dan looks at him like that time he actually _did_ get the coffee machine to work and couldn’t believe he’d done it. “No, it - It wasn’t me. Not exactly.”

“Not exactly,” Dan repeats. “Sure.”

Phil says, “Sure,” back, utterly unconvincingly. 

“Did you want to ask me something?”

Phil does, the list is huge, the list is full of _hey, so, what do you think of that guy on reception, the one who rescues you from the alarms all the time_ but he isn’t sure what he would do if Dan’s answer was _he’s okay I guess_ or something equally awful. He says, “A lot of things. I just wanted to see you again though. That’s probably the real answer.”

It’s easier to say from behind a mask.

Dan looks like no one has ever expressed the need to see him again before in his life, he presses his hand to his own chest (an odd gesture Phil supposes, like he’s pointing to himself. _You mean me?_). He says, “We’ve met once,” again. “Once. You don’t know me at all. Or we haven’t met once, we’ve met more than once.” 

Phil moves forward onto his toes, ready to jump away, wondering why he can never keep the threads of a conversation to where they’re supposed to be.

“No,” Dan exclaims. “Don’t leave. I’m not going to ask anything.”

Phil lowers himself, rocks back on his heels. “I’m terrible at this.”

“This?” Dan gestures between the two of them, symbolising something Phil doesn’t understand.

“No,” he says. “This.” He gestures to himself, hood to shoes. 

“You seem to be doing an okay job to me.”

“That’s nice but really not true.”

Dan tilts his head to one side. “You got my samples back.”

Phil sighs, deeply, releasing something he thought he wasn’t holding. “Yes.”

“I knew it.”

Phil says, “Dan,” and then isn’t sure if Dan’s actually introduced himself to him when he’s like this, but it’s too late, he’s said it (maybe that was the thing he was holding; everything he feels about Dan seems to be clutched too close, too overflowing, until he starts spilling pieces everywhere, for everyone to see). “There’s - It’s not just a person breaking into the lab, I don’t - I saw them on the roof, when I got your samples. They’re -”

“What?”

“Like me.”

“Like you?” Dan frowns, then says, “_Oh_. Like -” he holds his hand out, does exactly the same thing Phil did earlier but slower, drifts his hand to where Phil’s hair would be if it wasn’t covered, skims his fingertips down to the air around Phil’s knees. “Like you.”

“What could someone do with them?”

“Anything,” Dan says. “They could do anything. There wasn’t much work left to do really, I just - I didn’t finish. I thought it had got too much for me and I quit but there’s enough to - Someone else could finish it. If they wanted to.”

“You said you were super productive.”

“I did. I was. Why, have you been googling me?”

“No,” Phil says. “I don’t want to learn anything about you that you don’t tell me yourself.”

Dan’s mouth falls open. The dimple in his right cheek flashes. “I’m not going to ask who you are because you left last time I did that and I don’t want you to leave again but I really _really_ want to know who you are. That’s - no, don’t leave. You - I told you the whole thing. I was really, I don’t know, _famous_ for a bit. I had a fanbase and everything. I didn’t even know scientists had those but I just slowed down and everyone kept asking and _asking_ and then the slowing down just became a complete stop with, like, content. Or any kind of anything. People thought I’d gone missing. Not that anyone looked for me.”

“I would have looked for you.”

“Well, I was incredibly easy to find. I was exactly where I always was. Just not doing anything. Apparently people base your entire existence on what you _create_ and I just - wanted things as they were.”

“Are you keeping the samples because you might finish them?”

Dan looks at Phil like he’s looking through the mask, directly into Phil’s eyes. “I’ll never finish them.”

“But if someone else does -”

“Do you want me to destroy them, is that where this is -”

“Dan.” Second time. He really is just revealing fragments of himself, he should just take the mask _off_. The tone of his voice alone is too much, Phil winces to hear it. Is that what he sounds like? Is that what he sounds like when his heart’s on display? “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t -”

“They’re the only evidence I have of me being good at something,” Dan says, voice small. 

In all of Phil’s many daydreams he never imagines telling Dan. He has no idea how it would go, what he would say, what would happen afterwards, because he has no idea what Dan feels about him. He wouldn’t be able to take it if he removed his mask and Dan said nothing. Or, even worse, just said _oh, Phil_ or something utterly nondescript. Phil isn’t used to imagining people having strong feelings for him, every aspect of it seems false. The Dan in his head casually says _oh, Phil, hi_ rather than _I wanted it to be you_. Phil is slow to fall in love but apparently even slower to snap himself out of it. 

“That’s not true,” he tells Dan. “That’s absolutely not true.”

“You don’t literally don’t know me.”

Phil, helplessly, replies, “I literally do.”

Dan says, “You have to stop saying stuff like that. It’s not - you know more than I do, it’s not fair.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologise, I don’t want you to be sorry about it.”

“Do you want to go somewhere? I can fly, we can go wherever you want.” The conversation has completely gone astray, Phil is aware of having dropped his feelings everywhere, entire segments of his heart, the disguise, the fake voice, is pointless. This whole thing is pointless. He’s so tired. “Maybe not _wherever_, there are limits, but I could try. I would try.”

Dan touches his cheek. Most of it is under the hood or covered by the mask but there’s a small piece of skin that Dan’s thumb catches. Dan makes a small noise, like he’s surprised himself and didn’t intend to move at all. Phil makes a noise too, it sounds like hope. Dan starts to say something but then obviously regrets whatever it was going to be and says, “Into space?” instead.

Phil smiles. Dan can probably feel it under his thumb. “Space.”

“It looks peaceful.”

“If that’s where you want to go.”

“Maybe not right now.” Dan drops his hand, touches Phil’s elbow and says, “I’ll walk. Home, I mean. Not to space. And I’ll be fine, you don’t need to follow me again.”

“I.” Phil stares at Dan’s hand on his elbow, keeps staring even when it’s removed. “I’m probably going to do that anyway. Just for safety.”

Dan huffs and turns to walk across the car park. He doesn’t look back at Phil, or up at Phil, until he’s made it to the front of his block of flats and turns around to wave, once, over his head at the roof where Phil is sitting, cross legged, across the street.

Phil waves back and thinks, like he had before, frozen in time with his hand outstretched for a keycard, feeling everything like a press to his chest, _oh my god I love him_, and it’s not a surprise anymore, it’s just a statement of fact.

-*-*-

“Destroy the samples,” says The Spirit. “Duh.”

Phil allows the “duh”, even if it’s out of character. The Spirit has been sassier of late. “It’s not that easy. They’re his work, he’s proud of them.”

“This is why you shouldn’t get _attached_ to people.”

“What, not ever?”

“It ends badly,” The Spirit replies, stiffly. “They can’t break in if there’s nothing to find.”

“I can just catch them myself.”

“That’s a big step up from catching muggers. You know that.”

“You don’t think I can do it.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Wow,” Phil says. “Thanks.”

“I’m being honest. I’ll always be honest with you.”

“That’s maybe _too_ honest.”

The Spirit gives a big static filled sigh. “You don’t need to catch them. You don’t even need to interact with them again. Destroy the samples. Then the whole thing’s over. That’s what they want so just get rid of it.”

“I _can’t_.”

“Because you like this scientist.”

“I don’t like him.”

The Spirit sounds confused. “Really, I thought you said that -”

“I love him.”

There’s a very long pause which Phil has come to realise only happens when The Spirit has to gather their thoughts together because he’s said something particularly naive or ridiculous. When they finally speak it’s just to say, “Well, that makes everything complicated,” and Phil wants to laugh and say _you’re telling me_.

-*-*-

PJ still looks tired in a way that PJ rarely does. Phil’s tired too, from being up all night trying to explain things to Cornelia, who had got very emotional and hugged him a lot, but PJ looks like he hasn’t slept in a week.

Phil leans over The Desk and says, “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Are _you_ okay?”

Phil considers this. “Sort of?”

PJ says, “Phil, I -” and forgets to announce Dan’s arrival. Phil looks up and suddenly he’s there, keycard held out, lilac smudges at his eyes, the zip of his coat done right up to his chin. With no warning for it, with being presented with him unexpectedly, Phil doesn’t know what to do and so just says _Dan_ like he’s been sat at this desk all night waiting for him instead of sitting on roofs watching him walk home “Dan.”

Dan says, “Morning Phil.”

Phil takes the keycard, scans it, and hands it back.

Dan tries to push the keycard back into his pocket, misses a few times, fumbles with his coat, runs his fingers through his hair, and mumbles, “Can you walk me to my office?”

“What?”

“Can you walk with me? I have to.” The sentence ends, hangs in the air. Dan says, “Please?”

Phil stands up. “Sure, okay.” He looks at PJ. PJ, wide eyed, looks back. “I’ll just -” he maneuvers his way around The Desk. “Is everything okay?”

Dan doesn’t answer until they’re in his office. Phil notices, for the first time, that there’s no perfectly aligned stationary, in fact there’s just one notebook which is at an angle on Dan’s desk, next to a few pens that are all in different positions. Phil stares at them as Dan says, “I’m going to ask you something really weird. Like, _really_ weird. And if I’m wrong you have to pretend that we never had this conversation at all, and we’ll probably never speak to each other again because it’ll be too awkward. Okay?”

Phil knows what the question is going to be before it comes. He can feel himself bracing for it, leans like he’s about to catch something Dan’s going to throw to him. He’s going to lie, he decides, that’s just the best way. Dan’s going to ask and he’s going to lie. Right to his perfect face. It’s the only thing he can do, lie, and if they never speak to each other again then it’s probably for the best. Nothing would ever have happened anyway. 

“Are you -” Dan stops, laughs either at himself or the whole situation, “I don’t even know if you’ve got a new name or something, but are you The Green Hoodie? Who now wears black and keeps meeting me outside work and making sure I get home safely and -”

Throw yourself into the sky, Phil thinks, and lie. 

“Yes,” he says. 

Dan stops. “Fuck, really? I didn’t think you’d say it just like that, I thought -”

Phil says, “Oh my god,” and he’s higher pitched than the alarms. “I wasn’t going to. I was going to pretend I didn’t know what you meant. Oh my _god_. I just said it when I didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t want to tell me?”

“I wanted to tell you _so much_.”

“I’m confused,” Dan says, but he doesn’t look it. He looks like he’s completed his life’s work, and every sample he ever made has become something beautiful. “I wanted it to be you.”

“You did?”

“I knew it was. I _knew_ it.”

“But you _wanted_ -”

“You got my samples back.”

“Of course I did.”

“You said all of those things to me.”

“I meant them,” Phil says. “Everything.”

Dan frowns. “You were limping. The other day.”

“I fell off a roof. Or sort of got pushed off a roof.” Dan gasps. “No, it’s fine, I can heal. I have super healing, I got - something bit me here.” He points at the floor. “In your office. I don’t know if it was something you made or if it was random but it was a few months ago when I came to get you, with the alarms, it was after that.”

“Do you often fall off roofs?”

“More often than I should.”

Dan shakes his head, Phil supposes at the idea of him falling off roofs. “You changed from green to black.”

“You said you liked black.” Dan smiles, blindingly, and takes two tentative steps towards him. “I didn’t mean to scare you the first time. My landings aren’t great. I’m practicing though. A lot. I haven’t been doing this very long exactly. And sometimes it’s - I can’t believe I’m telling you. You’re the first person I’ve voluntarily told.”

“Voluntarily?”

Phil has a flash of Cornelia, almost the same colour as her hair, mouth open with a noise she isn’t making, framed in the doorway of his bedroom. “There’s - the other person sort of found out accidentally. But I’m not good at hiding it, I don’t think. _You_ knew.”

Dan says, “I just,” and rubs at the space between his eyebrows. “You’re good at hiding it. Don’t worry about that or anything. It’s different with me.”

Something in Phil’s heart sings, hopefully. _ Different how? He just said that he wanted it to be you! He just said that! Ask him about it!_ It’s not a thing that sits well on him though, hope. “We still - We have to talk about what we’re going to do.” Something flickers over Dan’s face. “About the samples.”

Whatever the something was disappears. Dan says, “Right. But.” He pulls his sleeves down right over his hands. “I told you about that.”

“I’m not going to make you destroy them.” 

Dan keeps pulling at his sleeves, even though there’s nowhere else for them to go. He looks like he wants to pull his whole lab coat off and hide in it. “It’s the most logical thing to do though.”

“But you don’t want to do it.”

Dan makes a hitching noise, almost like a hiccup. “I’m not even doing anything with them. I never will. They’re just, like, a reminder of how close I got and how _popular_ I was, and I know it’s lame to say about being popular but I really wanted to be. Back then. They’re useless.”

“They’re not useless,” Phil says, desperately not wanting Dan to ever make that noise again. “They worked. Or something worked.” The bite mark is non-existent, it always was, but he holds up his wrist, points at the spot where it had roughly been, and says, “Something bit me. Here, in this room. And that’s how I -” 

“_Bit_ you?” Dan touches Phil’s wrist, very gently, with his index finger. “That’s not really possible unless it’s like gotten into the spiders or something.” This thought is considered and then lands. “Fuck. I bet it is. I used to leave them - I’m really messy, I -”

He is still touching Phil’s wrist. Phil swallows. “What, no you’re not. Your desk is always -”

“I do that because you used to tidy it up.”

“I thought you liked it that way.” 

Dan loops the rest of his fingers around Phil’s wrist. “I’m sorry. About the potentially radioactive spiders.”

“It’s okay. The flying’s pretty cool.”

“You offered to fly me home.”

“That was a terrible idea. I said I would have caught you if you’d fallen but I really can’t promise that. And we’re both really tall. It really - I don’t know what I would have done if you’d said yes.” He actually does know. He would have done it anyway because Dan would have wanted him to.

Dan squeezes his fingers once, thumb to Phil’s pulse point, and releases his wrist. “If there _are_ radioactive spiders I hope they didn’t bite anyone else.”

Phil realises that he had never considered this, had always thought he was unique, and then is immediately irritated with himself. His thought process usually goes that way: a sudden revelation followed by a _how did you not know that, how had you not worked that out_. It’s his turn to make a shocked hitching noise (Dan says, “What’s wrong?”) and then to hit his knuckles to his forehead because, what, did he think he was _special_, that whatever magical radioactive thing that bit him had sought him out specifically because it thought he would be the best option? (Dan says, “Phil?”) _Him?_ He wasn’t aware that he’d thought that way but apparently he had, he’d believed it all along. 

Dan says, “Phil.”

“Sorry. I’m - I just thought of something. I have to - I should go back to work, I’ve been in here ages and I should get back to the desk.”

“Are you going to drop out of the sky later?”

Phil almost says _do you want me to_ but again the Dan in his head shrugs and replies _not bothered either way really I was just asking_. He says, “I don’t know. It depends what happens today I guess.”

Dan nods and, completely out of nowhere, nonchalantly, like he’s not stepping right out of a daydream Phil hasn’t even had yet, says, “I knew it was you because I pay attention to you. It’s not because you’re obvious. It’s just because I watch you. Not in a creepy way. I just knew your voice and your mannerisms and the things you’d say. I knew it was you. And I wanted it to be you. You said all the things I knew you would, when I told you that stuff, and I -”

PJ, echoing down the corridor, shouts, “Phil. Anytime that you want to come back.”

“I wanted it to be you,” Dan finishes. “I want you to know that.”

Phil, in the corridor, already two steps back to PJ, is so overwhelmed, so unused to hearing the things he wants to hear actually being said, says, “Thank you. No, wait, I don’t mean - I _do_ mean thank you, actually, but I -”

“Phil!” PJ shouts. 

“I’m in love with you,” Phil says. “I want you to know that.”

He doesn’t wait to see Dan’s reaction.

-*-*-

He also doesn’t tell PJ. When he gets back The Desk is covered in papers and cards with PJ in the centre, looking even more tired than he did earlier, and he makes an anguished noise when Phil sits back down. Some of the papers look like plans of the building, which Phil is fairly sure that they shouldn’t really have on reception. “PJ?”

PJ makes another noise. “You’re back.”

“You were calling me.”

“I was. I need you to, uh, run an errand.”

“An _earrand_?”

“Yeah, we need to restock the break room.” PJ holds up a sizeable looking list. “You -”

“But we don’t do that.”

“I said you’d do it as a favour.”

Phil looks, pointedly, at the plans on the desk. “What are those?”

“They’re nothing, I’m just working out the best fire exit routes, for when we have the alarms again. They said it was okay for me to have them.”

“That list would take me ages,” Phil says and something, _something_, a formation of an almost thing, clicks. “I’d be gone for hours.”

PJ waves the list, slightly frantically. “Please, I said you would. It doesn’t matter how long it takes.”

Phil takes the list from him. It’s full of exotic coffees, next to which PJ has written (in block capitals) the shops that Phil should get them from. They’re all on the other side of the city. If he went there, and the alarms went off, it’s easy to assume that he would never get back. If the person who wrote the list only had a very basic understanding of what Phil can do. 

(if that person is PJ. Who has only seen him on a roof, in his work clothes. Who didn’t want to fight him and made sure that he landed in something safe. Who only knows him from the news articles. Who is his best friend and made coming to work bearable. Who Phil wanted to tell so that they could be _partners_, so that PJ would think he was amazing. _PJ_. Who must have been bitten by something too. Who always makes sure everyone is out of the building. Who must be setting off the alarms himself.)

It’s obvious. It’s suddenly so obvious.

Phil’s breath is short, he gasps for air, and when PJ looks like he’s about to say something he interrupts and says, “I’ll do it. I’ll go,” when he wants to say _I know it’s you. Why_.

“Great.” PJ nods. All of his movements seem frantic suddenly. 

“I’ll go right now.” Phil stands, sits back down, then stands again. “You want me to go.” _Why?_

“Take your time,” PJ says. “There’s no rush to get back.”

“No,” Phil replies. “Of course not.”

They stare at each other for a second. The list is crumpled in Phil’s hand. Can PJ tell that he knows? Phil tries to keep his face as impassive as possible and, judging by the twitch around his eyebrows, PJ is trying to do the same. 

PJ says, “I’m sorry.”

Phil crushes the list further in his fist. “For what?”

“For.” PJ hesitates. “Making you go across town to buy coffee.”

“You.” Phil hesitates too. It’s like they’re playing chess, but the board’s a mess and no one can decide what the next move should be. “I know that you have your reasons.”

The fact that PJ doesn’t even question the randomness of this statement just confirms everything. Phil wants to grab him by the shoulders and shout _Why?_ in his gentle, friendly, face. He doesn’t know why it had to be PJ.

He leaves but, obviously, only goes as far as the end of the street before he calls The Spirit and releases everything, in an explosion of _why_ that he can’t even keep track of as he’s saying it. “It’s PJ,” he keeps repeating. “The whole time it was PJ. I didn’t even know.”

The Spirit is as even paced as ever. “Does he know you know?”

“I - Maybe? There was a moment when I thought he did, but I -”

“He’s obviously doing it today then. That’s why he was trying to send you away. Stupid idea though, what did he think you were going to say?”

Phil says, “Yes. I always say yes. It’s only because I’d just - Dan had just said -”

“You’ve told Dan?”

“No, I left. I told him I loved him and then walked away.”

“Well,” The Spirit says. “This is a pretty emotional day all around. Why did you tell him now?”

“I told him who I am, or he guessed who I am, and then we were talking -”

“You told him who you are?”

“I wanted him to know!” Phil shouts, not meaning to really. “I didn’t mean to but I _wanted_ him to know. I just wanted to tell someone. And he _knew_, he’d worked it out already.”

“You remember what I said,” The Spirit says. “About people knowing. People that you care about.”

“I can’t have this conversation now. Or this part of the conversation now. What do I do? What should I do? Do I go back, do I warn people, do I -”

“What do you think you should do?”

“This isn’t the time to stop giving me advice.” Phil feels like he might cry, here in the street with a completely destroyed list of exotic coffees in his hand. “I need advice.”

“I’m giving you advice. Have confidence in yourself.”

“That’s not _advice_.” Phil inhales and exhales. “I should go back.”

“And do what?”

“Stop him. Catch him. But he’s - he’s my _friend_, you don’t understand, it’s a lot to - he was wearing a cape, how long has he been - I have to go back.”

The Spirit’s voice drops all static, all modification. When she speaks again her voice is low and soothing. “You do. And you’re going to do it. Whatever you need to. I want to see you on the news later. For good reasons.”

Phil inhales and exhales. “Thanks.”

The voice modification clicks back on. “Also, I really just want to say that now wasn’t the best time for love declarations. That was slightly rash.”

“I know. It was just -”

“What did he say back?”

-*-*-

What Dan says, later, when Phil has snuck back into his office through one of the windows at the back of the building and thanked every deity possible that he’s anonymous enough for none of the scientists to recognised him, is, “You can’t say things like that and walk away.”

“I’m sorry.” Dan looks like he’s been running his fingers through his hair since Phil left, caught midway through pacing around the room. Phil has to step in his way to stop him from walking in circles. “I didn’t know what you were going to say back.”

“So you left? What did you think I was going to say?”

“I don’t know, like _that’s nice_ or _thank you_ or _I don’t feel that way about you, sorry_ or -”

“That’s what you think.”

“It’s fine. It’s fine if that’s what you wanted to say. Look, I need to tell you -”

“I know it was you, the whatever your name is at the moment, because I _notice_ you. That’s what I was telling you. I notice you so much. No one has ever come back for me, or waited for me, or remembered me, every time I thought it was the time that you’d forget because, I mean _I’d_ forget, but you never did. You surprised me every time. And apparently I gave you super powers or something, which is - You surprise me, is what I’m saying. That’s what I would have said if you’d let me respond.”

“You would have said that I _surprise_ you?”

“It means that I love you,” Dan says, patiently. And then, like he forgot to say it in the last speech, “Also, you chase muggers and stop robberies even though you can’t fly very well and fall off roofs all the time. Which makes me sad, by the way, please stop doing that, I can make you something maybe. You offered to fly me to _space_.”

“I would have done it,” Phil replies, too loud, but he’s trying to make himself heard over the noise going on in his own head at the moment. Explosions and fireworks and who knows what else. Dan loves him. He is a person who has caused love in someone else. Someone _feels_ that about him. For him. “If you’d wanted. I’ll do it now. You love me.” It sounds very questioning, he doesn’t mean it to, he wants it to be a statement of fact. “You love me.”

“I do,” Dan says, equally loud, and Phil remembers that Dan is loud when he means something, when he’s being completely genuine. “I really do.”

Phil kisses him at the same time as Dan is moving in to kiss him, so it starts as more of a collision, their noses bump and they’re both reaching for each other’s hair but Dan catches Phil’s hands halfway and turns his head and then it’s - Phil hasn’t experienced many perfect things but he would guess (he sucks at Dan’s bottom lip, Dan makes a small _oh_ sound and skims his fingers over Phil’s knuckles) that this is one. This exact moment right here. He tugs his hands from Dan’s and pushes them inside Dan’s lab coat (Dan says _oh_ again, and it’s still loud. Phil adores him), Dan’s hands flutter around a little but then his thumbs are at the hinges of Phil’s jaw, coaxing his mouth open, Phil feels like he’s floating off the floor, maybe he _is_ floating off the floor, maybe they both are. He pulls away to get air and then immediately presses his mouth to Dan’s neck, at which Dan makes the most incredible sound Phil has ever heard, like his laugh but not) and Phil meant to tell him something, he was sure he did, there was -”

“I have to tell you something,” he says, somewhere at Dan’s collarbone. He pulls away and Dan stays where he is, hands still up framing Phil’s face. His hair is _destroyed_. “It’s PJ. The person trying to steal your samples. It was him the entire time, he’s the other one like me, the one on the roof, and I think he’s planning it for today, like something big, and I -”

The alarms, predictably, go off. 

Dan says, “PJ?” He’s blinking a lot, his eyes are dark, and Phil reaches for him. “From reception? Your friend PJ?”

“My friend PJ,” Phil agrees.

Dan touches his face. Phil leans into it. “I’m sorry it’s him.”

“Where do you keep the samples? Right now?”

“In the vaults. They’re locked away, he wouldn’t be able to -”

“He can do some electric thing.” Phil holds his palm up. “He could break the locks.” It’s ridiculous to think that they’re talking about _PJ_. “I’m going to have to catch him.” That also sounds ridiculous but is finally the plan, the confirmation. “I’m going to have to.” 

Dan looks incredulous. “What if you get hurt? We can work something else out. I can try something, we can -”

“I can’t get hurt. Just go outside and wait for me. It’ll be fine. I’ll be out before you know it.”

Dan kisses him, a solid press of lips on Phil’s forehead, then his eyebrow, then his cheek. “You don’t even have your costume.”

Phil, honestly, says, “I don’t even know if I need it.”

-*-*-

He doesn’t. The corridor to the vaults is full of unconscious security guards, all with fizzing blue manacles of some kind around their wrists. Phil is thinking _PJ_ with every single one he sees, remembers coming to work with a cold and having PJ insist on making him soup, all the times that PJ had encouraged him to tell Dan, every pep talk that PJ has ever given him, how lucky he’d thought he was to have a best friend who _liked_ him so much, even though PJ was cooler than he would ever be. _PJ_.

PJ removes the fishbowl as soon as he sees Phil. He’s inside the vaults, standing in front of one of the ceiling high metal shelves, and when he takes the fishbowl off his curls bounce in a way that makes Phil feel affectionate, for a second, nostalgic even, before he’s back to whatever indescribable way he’s feeling. Sad. Confused. Betrayed. Everything.

“You worked it out,” PJ says. He looks sad too, a little. “I knew you had.”

“Why,” Phil starts, has to regather. “Why is it you? I didn’t want it to be you.”

“I didn’t want it to be you either! Seeing you on the roof.” PJ presses a hand over his own heart. “I can’t believe it’s you. We could have been partners.”

“I wanted us to be.”

PJ’s face softens. “Funny how things work out.”

“Funny isn’t the word I’d use.”

PJ shakes his head, removes the silver briefcase from the shelf. “What’s the plan here, Phil? I don’t want to hurt you, I told you, I -”

“Why are you _doing_ this?”

“You want to have a conversation instead? I’m doing it because it’s a _waste_, having this locked away in here. All of that work, these things he created and didn’t finish, look at what it could be. Me and you, look at us. Don’t you want more? Don’t you want this to be completed? I have someone who -”

“They’re not yours to complete.”

“Don’t be so _good_ about this,” PJ says. “I can’t stand how good you are, all the time. Who gets powers like that and then uses them to stop muggers and find lost cats?”

“Me,” Phil says. “I do.”

The speed is never his favourite, he never likes how it makes everything blurry, like he’s running without his glasses but it succeeds it being able to get a hand on the briefcase at least. Everything snaps back into focus when he feels a shooting pain at his arm and then PJ says, “I didn’t want to do that,” but Phil is already ten feet in the air, hand hooked under the briefcase handle and PJ clinging to the other side. “PJ,” Phil says. “Please. I don’t want to fight you.”

“I don’t want to fight _you_,” PJ snaps back. “Just let me go.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Then what do you want to happen here, Phil? We’re just going to float like this?”

Phil, helplessly, says, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” and kicks PJ in the shoulder. PJ shouts, incredulously, doesn’t let go, and gives Phil another electric shock to the ankle. Phil yelps in pain. 

“We can’t -” PJ strengthens his grip. “We can’t keep hitting each other and saying sorry. This is _stupid_.”

“Then please just let go of it.”

“I’ll come back for it,” PJ shoots back. “It’ll still be there.”

Dan, from the floor, says, “Throw it to me.”

PJ lets go in shock, thuds to the floor. Phil, amazingly, keeps his grip, pulls the case upwards. “I told you to wait.”

“I decided not to.” Dan holds his arms out. “Throw it to me.” He takes several steps away from PJ. “Now.”

Phil does, drops to the ground in front of PJ, blocking his path to Dan. He knows what Dan is about to do and he says, “You don’t have to. I told you that you don’t. We can work something else out.”

Dan looks at him and Phil, again, feels amazed. It’s incredible really that anyone could look at him in that way, that he could see that on someone else’s face when they see him. It doesn’t seem in any way possible. He wants to take a photo, commit it to memory, so he can show people and prove that it happened to him once. 

Phil loves him. He knew that, he’s always known that but, god, sometimes it just grabs at him. The simplicity of it. 

Dan says, “I was thinking, right before I thought that it was stupid to wait for you because I don’t think we should wait for each other anymore, that I don’t know why I’m clinging onto these. I thought they were proof that I was good at something, but they’re - It’s like someone else made them. I don’t know why I even wanted to do it, or if I thought that everyone would want to change themselves because I did but that’s not fair, is it? I don’t want to change myself, not anymore. And I don’t -” he opens the case and pours the samples, which look nothing like Phil expected, tiny glass cell captures, about thirty of them, onto the ground. PJ gasps. “There it is. The sum total of my work. I never even finished it. And I don’t want to. I want to go forward.”

Phil says, “Dan,” because there’s nothing else to say at all and Dan says, “Forward” as he grinds every last one of the samples to dust underneath his heel.

-*-*-

Phil takes PJ to the police, on the pretence of having found him in the vaults when he was looking for Dan. PJ looks oddly proud of him for it, like he was expecting Phil to let him go, or he fully anticipated that Phil would be too weak to see the thing through. He puts his hand to Phil’s shoulder and says, “I’ll see you.”

“I don’t know PJ, I think you might be going to prison.” There are tears pricking at his eyes, which isn’t very heroic. “I can visit you.”

“I’ll probably break myself out.” PJ shrugs. “That’s what I meant. I’ll see you.”

Phil wipes at his eyes. “In a bad way?”

“Depends.” PJ squeezes Phil’s shoulder. “You did the right thing. It’s not what I would have done but that’s where we’re different.”

“You would have let me go?”

“Yeah. Don’t feel bad about it though. It’s because you’re a good person. You do the decent and right thing, always. The world should be full of people like you. I’m just not one of them really.” 

The Spirit texts _Good job_ which is high praise from them and, amazingly, the applause emoji. 

Cornelia, with impeccable timing, phones as he’s watching the car containing PJ drive away. He lets her shout down the phone for a tearful few minutes before finally saying, “No, it’s done. I - well Dan did everything, but it’s done. It’s over. Back to my usual patrolling.”

Cornelia sniffs. “Who’s Dan?”

“You’ll probably meet him soon.” Phil pauses. “I thought, when I get home, we could - I think we should tell Martyn. He needs to know.”

“I think that’s a good and terrible idea at the same time. But, you’re right, we should.” Cornelia hangs up, then calls straight back. “Wait, I meant to say I’m proud of you. I really am. I’m proud of you.”

Phil really is going to cry. “I know. I know you are. I’m really glad you’re my Alfred.”

Cornelia makes a wailing noise. “Stop it. You’re going to make me -” and then she hangs up again.

Dan, having stood next to him for the entire call, says, “I thought I could be your Alfred.”

“Sorry, that position’s filled. You’ll have to be someone else.”

Dan touches Phil’s cheek. He must be crying, though he’s unaware of it. “Your MJ? I’d be an amazing MJ.”

“You can be whoever you want as long as you’re here.”

Dan brushes his nose to Phil’s, kisses him in a way that seemed intended to be brief but really isn’t, they’re both too emotional and clingy for that, and Dan mumbles, “You can’t say things like that.”

“Well, I’m going to. A lot. You’re going to have to put up with it.”

“As well as the patrols, the falling off roofs, the uncontrolled flying, the super speed you didn’t tell me about and the muggers?”

“All of it,” Phil says. “If you still want.”

“I’m always going to want,” Dan replies and kisses him again, Phil’s hands caught in his ink stained sleeves, before he pulls back and says, “All of it. The whole thing,” so Phil kisses him, on the pavement, into the sky, in space, in every daydream possible and all the ones he didn’t think _were possible_ until Dan pulls away again and says, “With you. Just to specify. I meant forward with you.”

(and that’s where they go.)

**Author's Note:**

> \- hey, it's your girl, trying to get back into the writing game. it's been tough, thanks to everyone who sent lovely and encouraging messages.
> 
> \- this is a small and speedier version of what i intended to be a much much longer fic (it still has some hints of the superman:homecoming au i wanted it to be!) so i may write more in this 'verse later, who knows.
> 
> (i'm leblonde on tumblr, come and say hi)


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